Some Dutch holster touch-up work

[Vlim]

Recently Ed had a Dutch KNIL holster for sale. Since I was looking for one we struck a deal and the holster arrived here safely. One of the issues that it had was that were the pushbutton on the cleaning rod pouch used to be, there was a gaping hole.

The missing bit, the original button with a small strip of leather still attached to it, was rediscovered by forum member Wlyon (Bill), who found it in the grease compartment of his cleaning rod.

The button and the holster were reunited and are back in their home country

Today I started with the first attempt to reattach the button to the cleaning rod pouch flap and I have to say it turned out pretty well. Of course, I don't expect the repair to be completely invisible, or to hold up under use (as I doubt that the holster will go into action again), but it had to look decent nonetheless.

Tools used were a strip of donor leather, the holster, the button and a good quality adhesive, suitable for the job. The holster was attached to a table top using a set of plastic clips, so that the flap was lying absolutely flat on the table. A piece of swab was placed below it, this helped to absorb excessive glue and preventing to bond the holster to the table.

With a lot of patience, a small cutter blade and a tiny watchmaker's screwdriver, the contact areas of the leather were covered in adhesive and the leather parts stuck together. Since the hole was bigger than the remaining leather + button I first bonded the button to it's proper location, leaving a gap of about 2-3 mm at the other side.

The first repair was left to set for a while, in the mean time I prepared a small patch that would fill up the remaining gap (a semi-circle of about 1 -3 mm wide. The patch was test fitted and trimmed where needed, then bonded into place using the same set-up. Much to my surprise, the undyed repair patch soaked up the color of the surrounding old leather during the adhesion process. I used the tiny screw driver as a spatchel during the process, aligning the fibres and removing ecess adhesive.

The repair is a bit more noticable on the photo (macro lense setting) than in real life. Under normal light, it nicely blends in and is almost invisible.


After this, the repair was left to dry for a couple of hours. When dry, some tiny gaps, only needle hole sized, were filled up with a little adhesive and some donor leather fibres. Again, the fibres absorbed the dye from the old leather.

All in all, the end result is very acceptable. The hole is gone and the button is in the right position. A little more touching up can be done when the adhesive has completely set, we'll see how it works out.

Below are some before and after shots. Some of the before shots borrowed from Ed and Wlyon.